The other thing
by Backgroundnoise
Summary: For Michael Scofield, fear was the fading memory of her voice.


**Title****:** The other thing.

**Disclaimer:** I don't own Prison Break… Sad but true.  
**Rating:** PG-13  
**Summary:** For Michael Scofield, fear was the fading memory of her voice

**Pairing:**Michael/Sara

**Spoilers:** S1, 2, 3 and vague speculation for season 4

**Author's note:** Because sometimes miracles happen, here we go again.

To my very patient and very lovely Maria, thank you.

By Lylou

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"_-__…But my brother told me there wasn't anything in the closet but fear. And fear wasn't real. He said it wasn't made of anything just…air. Not even that. He said you just have to face it. You just have to open that closet and the monster would disappear."_

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Michael Scofield, still used to wake up with a start in the middle of the night.

The intense humid heat in the dark room filling his lungs and sticking to his skin and also his own memories - blurring painfully in his dreams - used to wake him at night.

Like now.

When he opened his eyes in the darkened room Michael could feel that cold sweat on his skin, which only appears when you have been truly frightened or you are in pain. He took a deep breath, slowly letting the hot air around him inundate his still sleepy senses, while he felt his heart pounding loudly in his ears. A strangled scream had made its way to his throat.

All that never-remembering-a-nightmare-after-you-wake-up-crap, had become something familiar and painful to him, two adjectives that always seemed to go together for Michael Scofield.

But the nightmares; the cold sweats and the strangled screams were only the very first stage of his really, really… really altered sleeping pattern.

Because Michael knew that the second stage was a sudden and overwhelming fear of the darkness surrounding him, he was sure that it was something deeply connected to his childhood. Something that always made his brain plan creative ways of getting out of that apparently strange room, while his body was still paralyzed.

"_This is not Chicago"_

That was always his first thought. Because every night Michael Scofield would wake up with a start, for a moment, he would think that he was still the man he had been many miles, tears and painful ink-lines ago; always, as if he were stuck in some horrific loop of nightmares and sleepless nights.

But those first two stages were nothing compared with the third and final one. Because when he begins identifying the noises from the outside, slipping through the open balcony door at night, or when he finally starts to defy the darkness and the faltering breathing, that little voice in his head decides to wake up and whisper into his ear that there is something wrong; something terribly wrong.

Something worse than the darkness or the unfamiliar noises from outside. Worse than that strange room and the hot air filling his lungs at a rapid speed. It is what has really awoken him in the middle of the night.

Then everything comes back to him: the dark ink lines underneath his skin, the guilt, the fences, the fear, Sona… Sara.

And that is the exact point in time in which Michael Scofield breaks down every night.

Sara.

Sara and "-_She is dead, Michael"_

For him, during those first confusing seconds that always seem to pass between the nightmares and the grief, Sara simply consists of a combination of her voice, her smell, her touch and her taste… The parts of her that his brain still holds onto.

And suddenly Michael painfully realizes that there will be a night when he won't be able to remember her voice anymore, or the way in which she used to say his name, that there will be thousands of small details of what she was that will be gone forever. He realizes that the pass of time and the desire for revenge will erase his memory of her some day. Then he won't be able to remember her small hands on his face, her breath dancing over his mouth, or that day – which feels like so long ago - he had been almost happy in a train lavatory.

As her memory begins to fade and is replaced by something greater than misery, and her sweet taste is replaced by the ash taste in his mouth, his still groggy and sleepy mind reminds him that she is dead and that there are no blueprints marked on his skin or plan "B" for that.

And it is then that Michael realizes that his older brother was wrong, because fear is actually something very, very real that fills and slowly rots everything in its path, and that it consists of much more than just air. For Michael Scofield, fear was the fading memory of her voice, her beautiful features becoming blurred and soon after forgotten and he just can't face it, because suddenly the damn closet is so full of fear that all the monsters seems to be outside; in that very dark room with him.

That's the worst moment of all, when the monsters, the fear, the darkness…everything, means nothing to him and the only thing that exist in the world for Michael is a big black hole, and everything he is or could have been, falls into it and disappears and suddenly there is nothing left for him besides that damn black hole, absorbing and taking everything from him.

The sad truth is that Michael does not care about good and evil, about hope and faith anymore, because in a world where Sara Tancredi can be taken from him, there is no place for faith. He didn't have the luxury of faith. He doesn't deserve it.

After all, subconsciously, Michael Scofield is convinced that he is in fact responsible for her dying, and even worse, that he is killing her more and more with every mile he travels fueled by revenge, rage and self-destruction _"-She wouldn't have wanted this Michael…_ _And you know it. "_

His older brother's words might have been right - Hell, he was sure Lincoln was right - but Sara wasn't there anymore to say what she wanted or didn't want, and Michael knew that certain people, including himself, had to pay for that.

And there is no epiphany, realization or acceptance at the end, knowing she is gone forever. Michael can't cry, scream or hit things anymore, because somehow he knows that the black hole has absorbed all that by now, even taking the memory of her from him and now there is nothing left for him except… nothing.

All that happens to him every night, until his eyes finally get accustomed to the darkness around him, and his brain, completely awakened, makes him realize: _"No!…She is not dead, don't fear the hole"_

And then, Michael Scofield opens his groggy eyes completely, half doubting yet half convinced that his mind is only playing a cruel trick on him; but it's not.

She is there, sleeping on her back and only a few inches from his hand.

Michael used to dream that she was alive and then when he woke up he would realize that she was actually dead. But now, every night he dreams about her, he dreams that she is dead, but when he wakes up, she is alive.

Sara's breathing is calm and her small body moves slowly underneath the blanket, and suddenly Michael remembers having joked around with her yesterday, about how she can sleep with blankets in a tropical climate. It had been one of the very first jokes shared between them since he found her, three days ago, but even then, she had answered with a meek smile.

Sara have been hiding in an anonymous hotel in the outskirts of the city and almost three days ago when he crossed the threshold and saw her, he thought the heat might have left him hallucinating – but what he saw was reality. She was alive.

She was alive and just a few feet from him, but in those initial moments he still was not willing to entirely believe what he saw. Michael remembered saying her name in a low and broken voice and then walking towards her ignoring his doubtful and obsessive mind, as he always did when it was related to that woman. Sara Tancredi, the one and only person on earth that could leave his mind at a complete blank.

He had kissed her: once, twice… hard and possessively, crushing his mouth to hers and touching her hair, her face, her neck, her back… everything of hers that his long fingers could reach, until he sensed his meddling brain screaming for air. Michael had smelled her, tasted her and touched her with his trade mark efficiency and attention to detail, until the last and most doubtful part of his brain was convinced that it was in fact her, Sara. The woman he thought he had lost for good.

And after those first couple of confusing minutes Michael Scofield finally understood that the woman he loved wasn't dead and hugged her in a merge of guilt, protection and possessiveness that absolutely overwhelmed her; he had burst into tears and until she whispered his name softly against the fabric of his shirt, he didn't let her go.

That had been almost four days ago but still, everytime Michael wakes up at night, he doesn't remember it immediately.

After waking up Michaels great mind - which had gotten him out of two prisons – slowly tried to put all the events of the last few months in order: Fox River, Sara in the infirmary, the riot, Sara in the ceiling with him, the break out, Sara's broken voice on the phone, being on the run, Sara and him meeting in El Gila, Panamá, Sara and him in that ramshackle cabin saying goodbye to each other, Sona, her in the photo holding the paper, Lincoln's: "-_she is dead Michael", _him trying to keep breathing after that, the second break out, the revenge, her memory fading a little each day… Everything that had happened up until he found her again.

Michaels extraordinary mind tries to process all that information and all the new ones, to adjust it to the reality of a dark room with Sara sleeping safety at his side. He reminds himself that they are now in an expensive suite of the "Panama Gran Vista Hotel", paid by Sara's inheritance. He reminds himself that Lincoln and L.J. are asleep in the suite adjacent to theirs, and he remembers how L.J. cried and hugged Sara three days ago when he saw her. He remembers the mix of guilt, shame and relief overflowing his brother's eyes…his mind puts all those facts together while he is still looking at her, refraining from touching her out of fear that she will disappear - as if she were nothing but a ghost.

But Sara doesn't disappear and Michael's mind plays the last trick of the night on him. It makes him remember all the other things he's learned over the last few days, for example that Sara is always cold when she sleeps - even if it's almost forty degrees at night. He's learned that she talks in her sleep, that she moves a lot when she is sleeping, that she doesn't like pancakes for breakfast, or at all, which makes her the first person he knows who doesn't like them, and that she is even more beautiful when she is walking on a sunbathed street in the old Panama City, wearing a white and long dress under the setting sun. He's learned that she emits low breathy moans when he kisses her neck and her ear, that his hands - which have assisted him in his break out from two prisons - shake slightly, when they are fighting with the small buttons on the back of her dress, and that she laughs deliciously into his mouth everytime he nudges her and slowly rolls her over in bed until she is underneath him… All that and a million other little things, that make Michael Scofield so happy and free that he feels like he could easily be living someone else's life.

In that dark and hot room, Sara's hair is in a dark mess spilled all over the pillow and one of her arms is twisted in an awkward angle on top of the covers: _"It will hurt her in the morning_", so Michael moves his hand slowly towards her wrist and touches her skin - ever so lightly making sure that she really does have a pulse - and finally moves her thin arm softly.

She wakes up immediately and looks at him alarmed and breathing fast, and Michael realizes that he does not know and that he really can't know why there is fear in her sleepy and beautiful eyes when she opens them.

They had decided that while the days for them were dedicated to bringing down the Company and putting together the broken pieces of all of them, the nights were for doing "-_All the things that we thought we would never do" _or at least, that was how Sara has re-named the nights for him forever two days ago, while she was standing half naked in the middle of their room with her hair still wet from the shower. It was dripping down on her half buttoned white shirt. Obviously Michael wasn't going to complain about that because an alive Sara Tancredi wearing only a partially buttoned shirt down to her thighs wasn't something he could argue against. Nor did he actually want to.

And that first night, while Sara was talking to him in their darkened room, she did it as if it were something normal. As if being half naked, with her hair damp and with a tiny crooked smile dancing on her lips was something they had gotten used to; as if to Michael, she hadn't been dead and gone only five hours prior to that.

It was exactly because of this, that Sara would find him sometimes looking at her with a palpable intensity in his strangely eerie gaze, or with his always changing eyes suddenly tearful and fixed on her, as if he hadn't seen her in years. In those moments Sara couldn't help but panic _"-He doesn't remember. For a second he really thought I was dead."_

And a grieving, mournful and inconsolable Michael Scofield - unable to help himself or save her - was something she didn't want to think about.

But now she is looking at him with a small sleepy smile dancing on her lips while she turns slowly in the bed to look at him, to be sure in the darkness, that he had that devastated and scared look in his beautiful eyes that she had come to identify so well in the last few days.

And of course, he has.

In a fast move, Michael stretches out his long arm and holds her warm body tightly against his own. It isn't a careful or tender lover's hug, no; he holds Sara tight and possessively, until the only thing she can smell, touch or sense is Michael Scofield.

In the darkness of the room filled with hot and humid air, he presses hard and desperate kisses to her temple, her hair, her face and everything else his mouth can catch of her repeatedly. With his eyes closed Michael whispers her name in a broken and obsessive voice without even realizing that he is about to cry and that he is probably hugging her too tight and surely hurting her. He just holds onto her protectively, and for a long while the only thing that matters to him is to feel Sarah next to him.

After a while Michael finally releases her a bit but still keeps her in his embrace underneath the covers that suddenly smell like sex, sweat and like them. More serene now and more as how he always touches her, Michael runs his fingers across her face and over her lips gently, feeling her small and still sleepy kisses in his palm and between his fingers. He smiles slightly against Sara's hair while his breathing and his senses are returning slowly to his body. Suddenly he hears her warm voice - worried and full of concern - close to him, filling the dark room and making her even more real to him:

-"…You can't sleep?"

Sara already knows that it's a stupid and obvious question, but suddenly it doesn't matter anymore because Michael runs his familiar hand slowly through her hair and Sara closes her eyes lazily when he whispers in a low and not at all convincing tone:

-"It's nothing… just a nightmare."

Sara moves slightly in his arms and asks softly against his chest:

-"About Sona… Or about the other thing?"

"_The other thing_" had become a way for them to name the nasty fact that - to Michael - she had been dead for weeks; it was just easier that way. Michael didn't have to say the word "dead" with his low and husky voice and she didn't have to see his eyes while he said it.

He tightens his grip around her subconsciously and whispers roughly and with his eyes closed, against her hair:

-"…The other thing."

Michael's voice sounds miserable, guilty, angry and tired all at the same time, in that strange combination of mixed emotions that their lives, their relation and their nights have become.

"_The other thing__."_ Of course. It was always _"the other thing."_

Sara already knew the answer, because sometimes she'd feel as if she were a ghost haunting his dreams. It wasn't fair that the man she loved only dreamed about her in a way that had him waking up terrified in the middle of the night. Sara hated to see that lost gaze in his beautiful eyes, as if the Michael she knew wasn't there anymore. As if he had just switched on auto-pilot on his way to self-destruction.

It was painful for Sarah to witness, but she used to think that it was better this way, than having Michael wake up startled from a nightmare and not having her right next to him in bed to comfort him.

Sara spoke softly while feeling strangely guilty of his nightmare, as usual:

-"Sorry…"

-"Don't be… It's not your fault."

Michael's voice sounded slightly different this time than other times. This time it sounded like when Michael would whisper gentle words into her ear with that very warm, very shy and very husky tone of voice that he would only use with her at night, when they were both naked, sweating and with their bodies pumping full of adrenaline from the desperate and needy sex they'd just had. His voice had sounded very much like that, like the Michael Scofield she knew, and something made her think that maybe there was still a small trace of that man inside her lover.

It wasn't much, but it might just be enough to save the both of them.

Sara cleared her throat and spoke in a teasing tone with a crooked smile on her lips:

-"You know… I was having another kind of dream"

-"_Another_ kind of dream?"

A hint of a playful chuckle sounded in Michael's voice when he spoke and Sara felt her hair stirring softly from his breath. She smiled brightly into the darkness of their fancy hotel room before she whispered against his shoulder:

-"Not _that_ kind of dream."

Sara laughed quietly and pulled back a few inches from his body, but she immediately felt Michael tighten his grip possessively around her waist, keeping her even closer to his body than before. She knew that Michael had done this subconsciously; that it was only his beautiful mind telling him to hold her closer which then in turn made Sara feel sad and guilty yet extremely loved at the same time, as only Michael Scofield could make you feel. And then, she understood that it would be like this for many, many nights to come because Sara knew deep down inside that a small, dark and controlling part of Michael Scofield was still mad at her for "dying"; that that part of him would never forgive her for leaving him alone in that dark and dirty place.

Never.

And that small, dark and controlling part of him makes Sara deeply miserable everytime she thinks about it, but luckily, the rest of the Michael Scofield loved her more than anything, so she would have to learn to live with it. Besides she knew that one of the five stages of grief was anger and Michael was still on it; even if he didn't want to be.

But Sara was waiting for the next stage, bargaining, by definition: seeking ways to avoid having the bad thing happen; as a vain expression of hope.

"_A vain expression of hope"_

Those words danced in her mind for a few seconds while she thought about him, about Michael Scofield, the man who's particular scent, salty taste, and deep breathing she could recognize anywhere. To her, all this should mean something more, she didn't want a fucking "vain expression of hope", they deserved much more than only… a vain expression.

He was Michael-_I-went-to-prison-for-you-_Scofield, he was the man who had combined life and hate, courage and love for that one way journey of justice and freedom.

He deserved real and overwhelming expression of hope.

-"I'm still waiting."

His voice broke the muffed night noises of the very hot, very suggestive and very haunting Panama City, which where slipping through the half open balcony and he spoke in that typical "Michael tone" that always seemed warmer and lower when he was talking to her; more like the real Michael Scofield.

She whispered against his shoulder, choosing her words carefully:

-"I was dreaming about our house…"

-"Our house?"

A mix of curiosity and sadness appeared in Michael's voice, but she continued:

-"Yeah…when all this is over, we'll need to settle down somewhere… I'm tired of hotels."

-"Ohh… I see."

Michael smiled conspiratorially in the darkness and planted light kisses on her forehead, gently running his fingers down her naked back and suddenly it occurred to him that maybe the mere fact of Sara thinking about a future with him would be enough to keep the hole away from him, maybe just for that night.

Even if it was a lie.

Because they both knew very well that Sara was lying, that she had not been dreaming about their house, that in the best scenario, she had not been dreaming at all.

But that didn't stop her and her soft and calm voice from giving him some much needed comfort, while her small hand trapped his long fingers:

-"Obviously, it will be in the outskirts, with nothing else around but us…It will be next to the sea, so close in fact that the only thing I'll hear at night, will be the waves and our big and sunny living-room will smell like saltwater every sunset. "

Michael closed his eyes and heard her voice in the dark and hot room and wished with all his strength to see it. To be able to see the house she was imagining for him; for them. He wished he could just close his eyes and see Sara sleeping on their couch under a checkered cover… He wished he could imagine something other than that hole absorbing everything from under him.

He especially wished it for her, because she deserved the sun bathed living-room and everything else, and suddenly he felt like he wouldn't be able to give it to her; the same man that had been sure once that he could have given her everything when he was just a miserable inmate with eight toes in Fox River.

Sara's soft and warm voice muffled by his shoulder made Michael lose track of his thoughts. He came back immediately to that hot and dark room:

-" ..And at the end of the beach --that is going to be at the very end of our porch—there's going to be a small wooden dock, with the fifth board loose, creaking every time we walk on it."

Michael caressed her hair gently and asked in that almost forgotten shy and charming tone that he only used with her:

-"…And do we walk on it a lot?"

-"Yes, we do."

Sara stopped for a few seconds and imagined herself sitting on the edge of their imaginary dock and she could almost feel the rough knots of the ramshackle wood underneath her hands and the tide coming in on the beach at sunset… and when she continued talking, her voice – if possible – sounded warmer than before:

-" …And of course you'll want to repair it, but I like it that way… creaking."

-"I see…"

While he whispered, Michael's breathing changed, because suddenly and without knowing even how, he had heard the loose board creaking underneath his feet and imagined himself ducking slowly to examine it with his obsessive and detailed vision. His long fingers touching the rough wood, for a second he could even smell the saltwater… and then, a very small part of the man he used to be before her "death" and before putting on a suit and entering that bank months ago, made him smile against her hair and whisper with his eyes closed, still felling the sand, the hot breeze in his face and seeing a barefoot Sara sitting at the end of their wooden dock:

-"…Continue, please…"

Upon hearing his broken plea, Sara knew that he was trying. That for the very first time in weeks Michael was trying to stay away from the hole; that he wasn't looking inside it anymore; wanting to fall into it and to be absorbed by it.

He was doing it for her. And for their wooden dock.

-"Our bedroom will be upstairs and we'll have an ocean view from the bed… From a really big bed with no place for nightmares of any kind."

This time Sara's voice sounded a bit far and distant, and Michael knew that right now she was trying to fight some of her personal demons. He was suddenly reminded of their first night together, just a few hours after he'd found out that she was still alive, when she unwillingly scratched him – and he still had the scratches to prove it - in the arm while he had tried to wake her up because she was crying and fighting. That time Michael had hugged her tight while she was still sobbing and kicking in her sleep and he had whispered her name into her ear over and over again, leaving small kisses against her hair and her temple in the process.

-"…Just the ocean and nothing else."

"_Too close… too damn close"_She continued talking but Michael's mind was travelling again without his permission. He thought about how close he had been to losing her; for the first time since he had recovered her, he realized that he really almost lost her. That he'd almost had to learn how to live without her and her scent, her voice… he holds Sara tighter while she continues speaking fondly about their house and his mind slowly comes back to that hot and still dark hotel room. To that bed that smells like their sweat and like Sara's hair:

"-… in autumn; and there will be a studio with big windows so you can do your… genius things."

Michael chuckled softly and looked at her before whispering:

-"My genius things?"

Sara slowly turned in his embrace and he felt her loose hair tickling his chest and his neck for a second. She laughed softly and continued whispering, fully convinced:

-"Yeah you know, all that stuff that only Michael Scofield can envision; I know you, I know that even if you were totally free you'll still need something to be obsessed with, something you'll need to figure out… or need to fix."

Michael, feeling naked in more ways than one, and not really surprised at how much that strong and brave woman knew him, swallowed hard and smiled slightly before whispering:

-"…Like the creaking board of the dock?"

-"Yep. Exactly like that."

He closed his eyes and left small kisses in her hair and on her temple, while his fingers ran lazily across her naked back:

-"You don't like my _genius things_?"

At the combination of worry and shame in his whisper Sara raised her head from his shoulder to look at him for the very first time and Michael felt her hair brushing slightly against his cheeks, but he continued looking at her, waiting for her answer and frenetically memorizing all of her beautiful features in his mind, just in case:

-"Of course… Your _genius things_ is part of the package deal…"

Michael smiled at her slightly, satisfied with her answer, and ran his fingers through her soft hair. She continued speaking with her eyes fixed on him. Her voice was barely above a whisper but it was warm and calm:

-"I don't understand your genius things or the way your mind works… but it is as much a part of you as these ink lines are."

Sara's finger gently caressed the paths and lines of dark ink underneath his skin. Michael swallowed hard and whispered in a sad and heated voice:

-"I hate that ink."

Sara smiled brightly and moved nearer to him, so close that Michael felt her soft breath on his face, her strawberry smell driving him mad, her hair falling upon him and her warm body --alive and pulsing-- upon him and Michael closed his eyes for a second, drawing her down to him.

-"I know, but you shouldn't…"

Sara's voice is just a faint whisper in the dark room but even that is enough to make him open his eyes again and gently brush her hair away from her face. Michael kisses her deeply and thoroughly, feeling her small hands move all over his skin, until she pulls apart a few inches from his mouth and licks her own lips seductively. She then leans back in kissing his earlobe before whispering:

-"…that ink brought us here."

In one fast move Michael scoops her up and draws her completely upon him feeling her surprised chuckle muffled by his lips while he kisses her slowly and lovingly at first, letting her hair fall to the sides of his face and feeling her warm body upon him and her pulse, her breathing and her life underneath his fingertips. He feels Sara smiling against the corner of his mouth and suddenly he remembers how much he loves that; every time she smiles, whispers or laughs against his mouth and every time she moans suggestively into his mouth when he kisses her hard and desperately, like he is now.

"_-It__ brought us here."_ Her hopeful and evocative words start to fade and get blurred by the warm and delightful weight of her small and creamy body upon him. His long fingers draw agonizingly slow circles on her spin, on the body that Michael already memorized perfectly two nights before. He raises his hands to her face and his fingers travel across her beautiful features until she smiles slightly and pulls away slowly, just a few inches from his lips but still close enough for him to feel her soft lips brushing against his mouth when she whispers, half teasing and half serious:

-"…Just for you to know, I always had a thing for tattooed guys."

Sara's soft chuckles against the corner of his mouth, her strawberry scent driving him mad and few locks of her silky hair between his fingers, make Michael quickly think of the many devastating images of Sara Tancredi with any other man in world who wasn't him.

She smiles mischievously and kisses him, feeling his grip tighten around her and every muscle of his body underneath her reacting and yearning for her. She feels Michael licking, nibbling and sucking her mouth intensely and roughly and in that certain way that only Michael Scofield can do things he pulls Sara against his body until the only thing he can feel is her warm and wet and risqué mouth against his, knowing perfectly well that in a few hours they will have to leave that room and that hotel. That maybe this will be their last night in Panama City, but that they surely still have thousands of miles of dessert, heat, fear, anger and nightmares ahead until they reach home - that house by the ocean with a small wooden dock with the fifth board loose and creaky.

Sara reads his mind magically like she always does, and draws away a few inches from his mouth, just enough to still feel his quiet breathing against her and his lips brushing hers slightly while she whispers:

-"I'm scare too Michael. Sometimes I'm so scared that I can't even talk or move… or sleep."

Michael caresses her face and runs his fingers through her soft hair with a grateful smile on his lips, knowing instinctively that the woman on top of him who at that very moment was looking at him with a blind faith that he wasn't entirely sure he deserved, was going to be a constant factor in his life. He knew that she was something so bright and perfect and beautiful that she would cover the dark lines of ink underneath his skin with her creamy body, her silky hair and her soft laugh.

Sara; who doesn't like pancakes, who is always cold - even in a tropical climate - who has to sleep on the left side of the bed and monopolizes the covers, who never dries her hair after showering, who would never tell him that she has terrorizing nightmares, maybe worse than his, only to not make his worse; Sara Tancredi, the very first person he had met who despite knowing him completely, loves him; Sara, who was scared sometimes too.

Michael smiled slightly and when he whispered, his voice sounded dark, sickly sweet, hot and curious at the same time:

-"You know, between this and the tattooed guys thing you are not making me feel better…"

She chuckled softly and kissed him slowly and deeply, sending electric charges to all his muscles. She pulled back a little before whispering delicately:

-"…Maybe we should be scared together"

And that was the closest to a promise or to a vow of love that she had been –that they had been—since all that had started.

"_Together."_ None of them had said that word in the last three days; of course there had been guilty sex, needy sex, hurried and desperate kisses, hot words in her ear, tears against her shoulder and her hair… but not _"together"._ His resurrected, beautiful, perfect and broken Sara Tancredi wanted to be scared together and occupying the place of the gun and the paper rose in the seat next to him; so hell yes, please.

Michael smiled, almost a real before-entering-that-bank kind of smile and whispered playful and tenderly in the room that was slowly lighting up as the sun rose:

-"So Doctor, your theory is that misery loves company?"

She smiled slightly and moved closer to him kissing him slowly. Michael closed his eyes satisfied in settling the issue, but Sara pulled away a little and whispered:

-"Yeah, I'm sure actually… many years of misery have let me know that I'm right…"

He kissed her gently and eyes closed, letting her vanilla shampoo flood all of his senses and opening his eyes only at the sound of her soft voice against his shoulder:

-"It's just that even being scared is much better with you… or underneath you…"

He smiled and a soft and low chuckle left her lips and she lazily let her fingertips brush against the four day stubble on his jaw, thinking that she had not seen Michael doing something as normal and ordinary as shaving yet. She secretly wondered if Michael Scofield was too unique, different, isolated and extraordinary for normal and ordinary things like shaving. Of course she knew it was a stupid thought, but it kept Sara quiet for some seconds before she continued, with a suddenly childlike and trembling voice, as if she were afraid of his answer:

-"My point is that it won't always be like this and seeing how the bad times are, being with you…I have a vague idea of how the good ones are going to be, with you as well."

Michael smiled surprised at the use of his own quote against him and then he looked at Sara in silence, playing with a lock of her hair between his fingers and with his eyes fixed on her beautiful features before kissing her, hot and thoroughly, taking his time to taste her, to memorize every little detail of her, like her breathing changing with his more and more needy and fierce kisses. The heat radiating off of her body, the muscles of her naked back under his tips, the wonderful feeling of the weight of her small body on top of his, her pulse - warm and constant - in her pale and long neck, her skin standing on end while he draws circles on her soft and creamy body, the warm Panamanian early morning noises in the streets slipping through the open balcony door, her pleading and heated moans against his mouth… And then, Michael Scofield felt the hole a bit farther away from him than just twenty minutes earlier. With his tongue in her soft, wet and addictive mouth and the rest of his senses focused on her, Michael barely realized that he had stepped a few feet away from the hole that night and that maybe some night in the future, he would be able to sleep in one go without nightmares, without "-_She is dead, Michael",_ without his mind tricking him into believing that she was really dead… A night – a life—without all that was still far away, but maybe closer than before, just maybe a tiny step closer than yesterday.

When he felt Sara's nails digging delightfully into his arm and every inch of her warm skin brushing lethargically against him, he decided that he needed to stop because he really needed to ask the next obvious question. So almost against his - and her - wish Michael gently pushed her away from his lips and smiled, a very real, very shy, very charming and very trade mark Michael Scofield smile and when he spoke --half joking and half worried-- his voice sounded like hot velvet, smooth and very warm directly into her ear:

-"… And how can you know that this isn't everything. That you have not seen the very best of Michael Scofield already; how do you know that there's going to be a wooden dock with a loose board at the end of the road?"

Sara smiled brightly and played lazily with her cold feet on his bare legs, making him smile shyly when she whispered, fully convinced and passionately:

-"And how do you know, Scofield? One thing is certain; you are here."

Michael chuckled softly and kissed her temple and her hair before whispering in return, letting his lips hover lazily against her ear:

-"So … Was that faith I just heard, Doctor Tancredi?

Sara smiled delicately and when she answered, her warm words sounded muffled by his skin:

-"No, it's something similar to faith… But you never know."

Michael laughed warmly against her temple and tightened his embrace around her, feeling her hot pulse under his fingertips, her breathing against the crook of his neck and he kissed her hair before whispering in a very low, very hopeful and very Scofield tone:

-"No… you never know."

The end.

You may now commence throwing tomatoes.


End file.
